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Bubbles lift a season's mood

Imagine Marie Antoinette off to the disco in a concoction of lace, frothing like champagne. And that the silhouette of her stretch dress is as curvy as a corset and inneon bright colors.

Absolutely fabulous! And that was the verdict on Christopher Kane, 24, whose lively show, crackling with energy, was inspired by that moment of liberty and frivolity when Azzedine Alaïa and Gianni Versace were fashion titans.

London currently stands apart from other European cities in that it is exploding with dynamism, especially on the party scene. Shows can seem more like a bar with a fashion collection attached. But the party mood does give energy to clothes that in London Fashion Week, which closed on Friday, have been short, tight and bright.

On a more sophisticated level, Giles Deacon gave dressy clothes couture status - without losing the edgy London vibe. His witty wink at punk as spikes round the neck and hems, or with hefty chains and skeleton prints on classy dresses, was a melange that you would find only in this city.

The designers who graduate from London's fashion colleges spill out, brimming with optimism, on to an ever-changing calendar of shows. Just the fact that Kane is so young and that he made his clothes - including complex rings threaded into peek-a-boo effects - in his bedroom would be admirable. Add to that: his business partner is his sister, who is also the fledgling company's CEO; and he is already an ideas consultant to Donatella Versace. No wonder he is London fashion's latest boy wonder.

Kane's show was on one note - the vibe of the late 1980s/ early 1990s, with references to Alaïa and the bandage-wrap French designer Hervé Léger. But there was a real verve to the clothes and the broad smiles on the faces of buyers from Barneys and Saks Fifth Avenue showed that this quirky energy is what draws fashion pros to London.

Giles Deacon's dreams belong to the world of Paris couture but he has started to bring those haute ideas down to Earth. We are not talking here about the fantasy black feather hats that added a kooky volume to his little black dresses. But rather about deflating the grand gestures (give or take some statement evening gowns). Short A-line dresses or those with curvier volume were finished off with a fluff of feathers at the hem - an airy contrast to the studs which featured heavily on a range of handbags designed for Mulberry. These accessories will be the approachable part of the Giles image (although watch out for unintentional rips on this season's fancy new hose).

The cocktail of dresses that the Austrian/Greek designer Marios Schwab came up with focused on the bust, not just with inset bra tops, but also in the way that the apparently simple outfits were cut. The result was seductive but not outright sexy. Taking the postminimalist concept that decoration has to be built into the surface, Schwab produced subtle effects, such as little black dresses apparently pieced together with diamond shapes. That was dramatic when the faceted surface moved to show a flash of lipstick red underneath.

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Clare Tough is a knitwear designer whose bravura and technical skills with the needle are exceptional. But for her first runway show, the imaginative mix of yarns and stitches was lost in the overall vision of sexy little dresses, shorts and even bikinis on some fantasy Paradise Isle. Among the flowers appliquéd as if on an old-fashioned swim cap, there were fine ideas and cute bags with knitted straps.

With the bar dress code on so many runways, it was good to see some designers tackling a wardrobe for before the Happy Hour. At Aquascutum, the show started with the house's signature raincoats - on staff who greeted guests in the soft heat of London's Indian summer. It was a foretaste of the collection by the design duo Graeme Fidler and Michael Herz, who had taken the classic trench and feminized it with ruching, tucks and even bands of blue and green across the beige. The effect was curvy: the coats shaped in at the waist above a lightly voluminous skirt. Now that the designers have redrawn the battle lines with their trenches, they need to concentrate on making the rest of the collection seem as modern and smart.

The city shorts that are on every runway can be part of an urban woman's wardrobe - at least in the hands of Nicole Farhi. Her collection made perfect sense, whether it was a pair of tailored shorts mixed with a crisp guipure lace blouse or the idea of pants cropped off high when the shorts were worn with a jacket. Farhi said of her dresses in polka-dot or gingham checks: "I liked playing with graphics this season." Her show was an antidote to wardrobes given over to London's drinking culture.

So was Antoni and Alison's charming presentation where the soundtrack was Shakespeare's "Midsummer Night's Dream" (albeit in a speeded up version) and the backdrop had human statues. They were of the leaf-strewn pagan god Pan, a man as donkey and another disguised as an apple tree. The show was oh-so- English with its prints of herbaceous border plants like eglantine and pansies on prim dresses, sweaters and skirts. The show was colorful, cute and added a sweet touch to London's multicultural fashion scene.

Zandra Rhodes was part of the London youth explosion in the 1960s and nothing has dimmed her love of vivid color and print. Those elongated lily patterns in pink and yellow or softer, washed-out flower prints were scattered over chiffon and silk. As with all fireworks of print, they required a simple backdrop and looked better on flimsy tops over shorts than as bubble skirts and flaring jackets à la Balenciaga.

Rhodes had not taken part in London fashion week for 20 years - and it showed in the long, glamourama presentation. Yet the audience for her clothes is from a new generation with the model Lily Cole front row as well as the rocker Rod Stewart's daughter Kimberly, who said before the show: "I am dying to see what Zandra does."